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Day Zero

@Dzerovc

Founders, your first $200K from top startup operators or brutal honest feedback. Reach out: hi@dzero.vc
Online dzero.vc Joined April 2024
31 Following 401 Followers 142 Posts

Latest posts 5

Day Zero @Dzerovc
Build faster, cheaper and more reliable - @useRouterPlus!
Alok Bishoyi Verified account @alokbishoyi97 Oct 29
AI teams overpay for inference twice: once for models bigger than they need, and again for idle capacity they don’t use. @useRouterPlus is the extended inference team for fast-growing AI companies. We test models and providers on your traffic and get providers to compete for your work.

Make your inference better. Go to routerplus.com
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Day Zero @Dzerovc
It gives you a different Hit, seeing something on a white board to real life & that's what it feels right now, as @origin_autonomy emerges out from stealth!

The trio has built bots that are live in NY
& have delivered 100K sq ft finished walls.

Glad to back them on their Day0.
Yogesh Ghaturle Verified account @yogesh_origin Oct 15
Thrilled to announce that @origin_autonomy has raised $20M in total funding, co-led by @Accel and @ZacuaVentures.

Excited to be building this with @ashishxdaga, @tusharmakkar08 and the super talented team at @origin_autonomy. We’re building general-purpose robots for interior construction.

Special thanks to @johnkoetsier at @Forbes for covering our journey.

News Article: tinyurl.com/ym2vj7ts
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Day Zero @Dzerovc
Go Rohan 🚀🚀
Rohan Nayak Verified account @RohanNayak2 Sep 4
In mid-2024, Pocket FM was at $200M ARR, growing 50% YoY, and we decided to kill its business model.

Revenue flatlined for six months, we turned cash flow negative, and investors were writing us off.

But then, Pocket's ecosystem exploded.

Our reasoning and why this happened:

What constrains Netflix's growth is content. They spend $17B+ on content production yearly, but many shows don't make it to the final stage. Of those that do, only a few become blockbusters. And those few are the reason subscribers stay on Netflix.

So we started thinking. Pocket was growing nicely. However, what limited us was how many new users we could add and retain at scale. The only solution we came up with was increasing the number of blockbusters. Blockbusters drive user growth and retention at the same time.

To get more blockbusters, Pocket FM needed more production.
That's why we pivoted to only AI Content production.

This did a number of things:
1. More content gets produced because we removed a lot of friction from doing so. It's easier for writers to maintain daily production. And for writers who still haven't found their hit show, testing and pivoting becomes less time-consuming. From taking several months to test even one show, you can now test 3-4 shows in one month.

2. Content quality increases. The more content gets produced and consumed on Pocket, the better the engine gets. We continuously monitor retention and other engagement metrics. When we detect something is working, our writing copilot learns it.

3. Unlocked hundreds of thousands of writers; Pocket's writing copilot is built to help writers without storytelling training.
This is in contrast to Netflix's model. While their budget gets allocated among a limited number of studios, Pocket's supply side is getting flooded with writers. Over 500k writers are producing on our platform.

4. Made it easier to cross-create ads to attract users. Better shows are easier to sell to people who aren't yet using Pocket. And the same data that feeds our copilot goes on to feed the engine we use to create ad videos, which is also self-reinforcing.
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After making the change, ARR flatlined for six months and we started losing money. It was extremely painful, but then growth and the whole ecosystem exploded.

- Hours of content produced per year went from 35k to ~2.5M.
- New titles added yearly more than tripled from 120k to 400k+
- Millions of new users joined Pocket.

The obvious risk was opening the gates to AI slop. That's why we have an extremely rigorous feedback and moderation process

Ultimately, the only thing that matters is whether users are enjoying the content that's being uploaded. Metrics don't lie:
- 12-month revenue retention went from 44% to 76%.
- Avg daily streaming time went from ~25mins to 150+ mins.
- DAUs/WAUs from 30% to 51%.

I think we're extremely early, and I'm excited to see how Pocket's flywheels continue to accelerate from here.
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Day Zero @Dzerovc
Ye sach hai, until one has seen the Day Zero Portfolio 🤩😅 #shamelessPlugin
pj Verified account @BeingPractical Aug 18
Twitter (yeah X) these days...
VCs (in India) are investing in Dosa, not in hi-tech.
VCs are investing in me-too wealth, not cutting age fintech.
VCs are investing in AI, but outside of India.
VCs are investing in US, not in India.
VCs are investing more in late-stage, not in early-stage.

I was in this camp earlier and even trolled VCs at times, until I understood this about money...👇

Money follows money, money follows growth, money follows all places it will maximise its returns.

99% money will follow that path, 1% that believes in you will back you. Life is unfair, deal with it.
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